The new protocol PHANTOM will compete with Lightning Network

The creators of the protocols SPECTRE and GHOST Jonathan Sompolinski and Aviv Zohar described the new protocol in a document published this week. The PHANTOM protocol promises reliable confirmation of transactions “at any network bandwidth”, including smart contracts. The new development is based on the previous solution from the same command, SPECTRE, which departs from the traditional block structure of bitcoin and uses more scalable “directed acyclic block graphs” (blockDAG). Researchers describe the technology as “the generalization of the Satoshi chain, which is better suited for a system of fast or large blocks.”

Unlike offline solutions such as the Lightning Network, when transactions are conducted on an add-on network, Phantom offers a client-based solution that allows you to leave all transactional data on the blockroom.

According to the authors, the main distinguishing feature of PHANTOM is that it makes possible the linear ordering of blocks, which SPECTRE did not allow. For this, he uses the “greedy algorithm” on the blockDAG platform and distinguishes blocks generated by “honest” nodes from “non-cooperating” nodes that deviate from the mining protocol. As the developers write, this difference allows all “honest nodes” to reach a consensus. Solving the problem of linear ordering allows PHANTOM to scale any calculation, including smart contracts.

Sompolinski and Zohar recognize that for the sake of linear ordering, PHANTOM sacrificed the transaction confirmation rate, which was higher in the earlier SPECTRE protocol. But researchers are going to solve this problem in future work.